Is it possible to run the game headless (no UI/GFX/audio) to generate late-game saves faster?

[Vellsi]

It's probably a question only QA staff or developers can answer but is there a way to run the game headless, means without UI, graphics sound or anything else that isn't necessary without player interaction, to generate late-game world states quickly for testing purposes?
I'm aware this is something regular users usually won't use and it sees most use during development but perhaps there's an option accessible via command line arguments or debug features.

 

[AndrewT]

perhaps there's an option accessible via command line arguments or debug features.

I don't see anything of that nature here:

https://vic3.paradoxwikis.com/Console_commands#List_of_console_commands

I suspect the answer is 'no' I'm sorry to say! But I have no way of ascertaining that at present, with Paradox shut down for the summer break.

 

[Magmaul]

There is a similar command to what you might be looking for in Stellaris, but I couldn't find it for Victoria 3.

 

[PDX_Sosanna]

There is a "-nographics" launch parameter used in some automated tests, but since that disables ALL graphics, including UI and menus, you probably won't get much use out of it as you won't be able to set up a game with it on user level.
Running an observer game on lowest settings on several clients at once is likely the only option for semi-quickly generating multiple late-game save states on user side.

 

[TerraPass]

I realise that this is an old thread, but given how sparse the information about running Clausewitz games headless seems to be (pretty sure this is the only thread on the subject that comes up in the search) it would be remiss of me not to share a couple of additional data points on the subject. Though note that I come from the CK3 modding side of things, YMMV with Vic3.

-nographics, despite its aforementioned limitations, has proven quite useful for CI purposes (automated smoke testing of Git pushes, startup error.log analysis etc.) on one or two big CK3 mods over the past couple of years. It has several noticeable advantages for such a use case, compared to running the game with graphics:
1. Can be very easily run in a GPU-less server environment/Docker container, provided just a couple of dependencies are installed (libglu1-mesa, libgl1 - at least in CK3's case).
2. Requires only a small subset of the game's files to actually run. Disk space/traffic can be a factor for CI environments, so the fact that -nographics can be run without most of gfx/, music/ etc. makes it possible to cut down the game install from like 10+ GB to about ~1GB.
3. Loads significantly faster into the simulation.
4. In-game simulation progresses a bit faster in -nographics, compared to the max speed in graphics mode.
It simulates an observer game and also produces autosaves in the user's folder, so could potentially be used for generating late game saves also, though admittedly I haven't used it for that purpose.

Aside from -nographics, which sadly no longer works on CK3 (and quite possibly on Vic3 either these days?), there is another way one can run the game effectively headless, though only on Linux - using LLVMpipe and Xvfb. I've described this approach in slightly more detail here:
/forum/threads/headless-nographics-mode-always-crashes-on-launch-since-ck3-v1-16-chamfron-on-windows-linux-macos.1766649/post-30441922
(Sorry about the plain text path - the auto-moderation thing prevents me from posting a message with actual clickable links or full URLs.)